This Is My Rifle
by phollie
Summary: In some shadowed, murky corner of Gilbert's mind, he thinks he'll always need this. Gilbert/Break. T. Language and violence.


I had this sitting unfinished for the longest time, and I finally decided to crank out the rest of it on the random longing for some Gil/Break. Booyeah.

I own nothing. Lyrics are "Corner" by Blue Stahli.

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><p><strong>.this is my rifle+<strong>

/

_[feel me in the aftermath_

_when you learn the world has teeth]_

/

The girl that Gilbert shoots in the mouth has blonde hair that almost glows silver in the sunlight. Her dress is blue, faded at the knees and scuffed at the elbows, and when she runs, the skirts fan out behind her like of the wings of a bluejay preparing for flight.

She's a pretty thing, a vision of slender shoulders and a long neck, and Gilbert shoots her in the mouth.

She can't be a day over sixteen. She's probably got a family somewhere in this wormhole of a city, with a mother and father that didn't throw her into the streets like an old apple core - _(What do you even _need_ a chain for, you stupid girl?) - _and Gilbert, he shoots her in the fucking mouth. Her blood sprays like red roses from her throat, spattering the stone walls of the church in brilliant flashes of wet colour. The fashion in which her neck snaps to the left from the impact is almost lyrical, pale hair fanning across her face like a virginal veil.

Any man would have married this girl. Any soul would have touched her in ways unlike a bullet bursting through her throat would. Hell, maybe even Gilbert himself would have, had he been blessed with hands that could do things besides kill and a heart not hardwired to love a golden boy lost in a world on rewind. But even that, he thinks, wouldn't have been reason enough. He will _never_ have reason enough.

She's dead before she hits the ground, and Gilbert swears he sees her smile.

Her eyes are green.

/

"You fascinate me, Mr. Gilbert," Break is murmuring into his ear as Gilbert wretches and gags, doubled over against the wall. The man's voice is a hot drip of syrup, and it makes Gilbert want to shatter glass. "You take on this job knowingly, you obey every command that Pandora gives you without so much as a scoff, _and_ your aim has improved an absolute _tenfold_ just in the past month. And yet..."

Gilbert coughs violently, shoulders jerking, bile rising. _Shut up.__ Just stop talking, I don't want to hear it._

"And yet you react like _this_ every time." There's the maddening sound of Break's teeth crunching down on hard candy; Gilbert wishes he could gag louder just to block it out. "It's not often that someone is able to surprise me," Break croons, "but you've somehow managed to do just that. Funny, I thought you'd be _used_ to such a thing by now, given how many times you've-"

And before he knows it, he's got Break crushed against the wall, pinning him with his hand on his throat. He's blazing, seeing red, ready to kill _(again, again, kill again, he _always_ has to kill again_). "_Used _to it?" he roars. "You...god _fuck_, Break, you don't get _used_ to something like that, did you fucking _see_ her?"

Break blinks at him, unfazed. Gilbert hates him, from the stitches of his frock to the red of his eye to the way his lips are beginning to curl hideously into a smile only worthy of crude portraits of wolves and demons. He reaches out to run his fingers delicately through Gilbert's sweat-damp hair, grazing his earlobe, and Gilbert just about bites his hand off, the snarl of a ravenous animal ripping from his throat. _Used _to it, he thought he'd be _used _to it, even when all of this is Break's fault, _Break's fault – _

Because hasn't Gilbert always needed someone else to blame? Someone in the here and now, someone to wrap his fingers around and throttle within an inch of their life just to pin the guilt onto something tangible. He can only glare into mirrors and curse at faceless ghosts for so long before that thirst kicks in again; and, well, isn't Break always _right there_, in his face, down his throat, surrounding him and breathing his sugary breath onto him until he fucking _suffocates_ from it all?

It's such a disgusting display, the two of them dressed in the dewy shadows of this dirty alleyway – but entirely too fitting, too _natural._In some shadowed, murky corner of Gilbert's mind, he thinks he'll always need this.

"You poor child," Break whispers. Gilbert's hand tightens on his throat when the man cups his face with the mock tenderness of a mother, and that does nothing but heighten Gilbert's rage because _she probably had a family, Christ, she probably got__ her green eyes from her mother._

"What on earth am I going to do with you?" Break croons, all mock apologies seeping and oozing out of his words as his gaze drops to the ground, a soft smile playing about his lips that could almost pass for sweet. His fingers curl around Gilbert's wrist before pressing into the sensitive pressure point, rendering Gilbert's hand limp and useless as it drops away from Break's neck and dangles at his side. Break shoots him a knowing smirk before turning on his heel and strolling away. "We'll reconvene at Pandora," he says, voice light as air itself, "where you can mope over tea and cigarettes until your master falls out of the sky, yes?"

Exhausted from rage, Gilbert slumps against the wall, glaring at Break's back beneath the messy fall of his bangs as he briefly contemplates the steps involved in losing one's mind.

As long as he can keep it together until Oz's return, he thinks he can last. He can keep himself in one piece, even if this gun in his hand threatens to tear everything to shreds, even if some dark, foreign part of him is praying to do just that. He can do this; no, he _will_ do this. He _will._

With a shaky huff of breath and a quick wipe of his mouth, Gilbert pockets his gun, straightens, and is on his way.


End file.
